


oh, i was made to live without you

by CallicoKitten



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Constantine (TV), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, and constantine is along for the ride, because i wanted to write him flirting with ray, but at least he got a few things to do outside of their romance thing, im tired of kendra's storyline only involving her uncertainties over ray/carter, kendra deserves so much better than this, so does ray tbh, so i wrote a fic where she tries to fix that, which sounds way more cooler than this fic actually i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 07:05:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6647089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day Vandal Savage bleeds out on her knife, Kendra Saunders takes Ray's hand. He jerks at first, caught up in a haze of laser fire and bloodlust but then he blinks, helmet visor sliding up and smiles at her.</p><p>"I'm going to break the curse," she says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh, i was made to live without you

**Author's Note:**

> so i haven't watched arrow for like ever, so sorry for any inconsistencies on that part. i'm also not terribly familiar with hawkman/hawkgirl from the comic books 
> 
> this fic assumes that killing vandal savage wont actually break the curse, all it will do is remove him from the playing field

The day Vandal Savage bleeds out on her knife, Kendra Saunders takes Ray's hand. He jerks at first, caught up in a haze of laser fire and bloodlust but then he blinks, helmet visor sliding up and smiles at her.

"I'm going to break the curse," she says.

There are a hundred Carter's from a hundred different times, different names, different stories but they are all saying the same thing. _It's not a curse, Kendra,_ dismissive and disbelieving, _true love is not a curse. It's a gift._ But it is. It is and she doesn't know how he can't see that. She's figured it out; she's just as trapped as Kendra Saunders: barista, legend and part time babysitter as she ever was as Priestess Chay-Ara.

At least Chay-Ara chose the Prince, Kendra and all the lives that came in between didn't have that liberty. _Think about it,_ she says to Carter, to Prince Khufu, to Joe Boardman, _if I fall in love with anyone but you it's doomed to end in heartbreak. What kind of choice is that?_

Ray squeezes her hand, "You sure?" he asks, eyes bright.

She leans up and kisses him softly, "I'm sure."

\---

 _I'm sorry,_ she tells an imaginary Carter the day after she makes her decision. In her mind he stands in their old apartment in St Roch, the place that had never quite felt like home for all its familiarity. Like Carter.

_I know you're out there somewhere, waiting for me and I know you might think this is just my way of running away from destiny and maybe it is. But if we're meant to be together than curse or no curse, we'll find our way._

Imaginary Carter shakes his head, eyes heavy with emotions Kendra can't empathise with.

It has always bothered her that Carter Hall strode into her life all ready in love with her. In love with who she was, who she was going to be.

Who she _might_ be.

 _If I'm supposed to be that person,_ she tells him. _I will be._

He doesn't have a voice in her head but if he did she bets he'd say, _you already are. you always will be. that's the point._

\---

Ray has nightmares sometimes; she learns this first while they're stranded in time. It's the first time they've shared a bed and she wakes to him twitching, mumbling, _Anna, Anna, Anna,_ under his breath.

Before, she never really kept up with tech news. She had a vague idea of who Ray Palmer was when they met, that by all accounts he died a year or so ago in an explosion that took out the top five floors of his building. There was a televised funeral, they had it on in Jitters for some reason and Cisco and Barry and Caitlin (before she knew them) watched with their hands clutched tightly around their coffee cups. A woman named Felicity that Ray talks about animatedly made a speech, short and tearful and that was it.

She guesses who Anna is before he jerks awake and tells her the story, eyes darting away, looking everywhere but her.

"I know this is kind of heavy stuff for a fourth - fifth? Date," he says, crooked smile and easy charm. "But I figure..."

She cups his jaw with her hand and smiles gently, "Our first date involved hunting down the man who killed me two thousand years ago who happened to be turning people into bird monsters. I think I can handle it."

His dreams about Anna are easier than the ones about his time trapped on a building site when he was no bigger than a grain of rice. Those dreams involve cockroaches and centipedes and stray cats in horrific details from a perspective Kendra would rather not have. He's never as upset about those ones when he wakes, it was the loneliness she thinks, that got to him more than the bugs. He probably liked the bugs.

He shrugs it off and calls himself a mess and Kendra is _trying_ to guard her heart against his puppy-dog eyes and sunny optimism but it is _difficult._ Everything he does makes her think of Carter at first, every time he touches her, every time they kiss there is a part of her that calls up memories. Ray kisses differently, experimentally, playfully. Carter always kissed her familiarly, slow and easy like they'd been doing it forever.

(Which, technically, they had.)

But the comparisons fall away when Ray tells her about his family. His parents, bright and happy and well meaning but not quite on his wavelength, of his brother, always looking for a way to weasel himself in to Ray's success. Ray talks about it all with a kind of resigned fondness, the day his dad tried to help him build a toy rocket, the cookies his mom used to bake, increasingly competitive games with his brother.

She doesn't remember talking about those kind of things with Carter. In fact, she _never_ remembers talking about those kind of things with Carter.

More frighteningly, she barely remembers those kinds of things for herself.

She must have had a mother, a father, somewhere she grew up but when she reaches for those memories they fall away, like sand slipping through her fingers. She has _notions_. Sounds, smells, colours. A red door, a plush blue carpet worn and stained to curl her toes in, someone singing a lullaby as she falls asleep.

But then all there is is Central City, her job, Carter.

It's like that as far back as she remembers. There is nothing before Carter or Joe or Khufu.

"It's a curse, princess," Sara offers, when Kendra tells her this. They have been stranded for two months, Sara is getting antsy, Ray has still not given up hope. Kendra's connection to her past lives is fading fast. "Like in fairytales, magic always comes with a price, right? So your price is that your whole life is about Carter. Which is kind of rough."

It's not fair, she thinks later, sitting with one hand flat against Ray's back as he insists this time it'll work, this time the beacon will work and the Waverider will find them. It's not fair that her life and existence is dictated by this man a woman with her face and soul chose two thousand years ago.

It's not fair.

And she shouldn't have to be resigned to it.

\---

It turns out Oliver Queen has a friend who knows a little something about ancient curses. His name is John and he has bleached blonde hair and flirts more with Ray than he does with her. He's sweet in a rough and roguish sort of way and even though he makes Ray flush bright red and stammer like no one's she's met before she trusts him implicitly.

"It'll be dangerous," he says. "And messy. It's always messy, though, isn't it? Curses and the like. Might take a while too," John smirks at her. "Up for another adventure, bird girl?"

Ray's hand is on her shoulder, curled, gentle. More supportive than protective.

"Of course," she says.

"Well, great!" Ray says, from behind her, sounding like it's anything but. "So I should pack for...?"

"Actually," Kendra says, turning to him. "I think this is something I need to do alone."

She's been thinking about this for a while. Ray's eyes go wide, cycle through a range of emotions before his gaze darts to John and he says, "...With _him_?" Ray's not sure how he feels about John, Kendra can tell.

She gives John a look and he rolls his eyes and shakes his head, "Alright, alright. I'll be over here when you've had it out with pretty boy."

Ray watches him go and looks back to Kendra, "Look, I just don't want you to get hurt, alright? I mean you're going off to break an ancient curse - which actually sounds like it could be kind of cool, by the way. You think it'll be anything like Indiana Jones? Because I always sort of wanted to - never mind. What I meant to say was, I honestly don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you."

"I know," Kendra says. "But I'll be fine, Ray. And I'll be with John who is a little unconventional, but Oliver trusts him, right? There's a reason for that."

Ray slumps slightly, defeated so Kendra strokes his arm, tries to soothe the worst of the worry away. "I just need some time, okay? And besides, I can always call you if I'm in trouble, right?"

He gives her a long, considering look and for a moment she thinks he's going to insist on coming, say, _that may be but it'll still be dangerous, I can't let you go alone._ Carter would probably. Or maybe Carter would let her go but expect her to call him later begging him to come along. She wouldn't, of course, and he'd get pissy, fly out and find her and she'd laugh at him for it.

She wonders if he'd support this, if he'd want to break the curse as much as she does. But he's not here right now, Ray is.

Eventually, he sighs. "Alright, I get that. But you will, you know, call if you need me, right? Unless there are mummies. I do _not_ want to have to deal with mummies."

\---

 _I just don't understand,_ Imaginary Carter has gained the ability to speak and he is not pleased. _Why can't you just accept it? You loved me, didn't you? I know you did. And you're throwing it away for what? For **him?**_

 _No,_ Kendra thinks. It's about far more than that but every time she tries to tell him this he looks away.

\---

They leave a few days later, John has a few dozen leads and a beat up old car to ferry them about in. He picks her up outside her old apartment in Central City and Ray kisses her goodbye on the doorstep.

"Be careful, okay?" He says, voice rich and warm. "And take care of him," he nods to John. "He looks like he could use... God, just so many things."

John flips him off from the driver's seat with a smile.

"I will. I promise. And you look after _you,_ okay? No explosions. I'm having Felicity keep an eye on you." She strokes his cheek. She's also having Barry keep an eye on him because she's well aware that Felicity and Ray are the exact same kind of genius which will probably result in double the explosions.

Ray laughs, "I promise. And hey," he adds, kissing her on the forehead. "I love you, okay?"

Kendra smiles, "You too."

"So you're cursed to always find your true love and now that your own personal evil ex - " John says, as Kendra clambers into the car.

Kendra interrupts him, "I never dated Vandal Savage."

John waves a hand, "Sure. Your own personal _nemesis,_ then - good word, no one uses that enough these days - is dead, you lose the whole 'doomed to die or lose each other soon after', right? You've lived through hundreds of years, thousands even. So, far as I can see, all that'll happen now is you'll be guaranteed to find this true love of yours, live a long and happy life and die. Rinse and repeat. Still a curse but doesn't sound like the _worst_ bargain in the world." He sighs, "And _I_ should know."

"There's more," Kendra tells me. "If I fall in love with anyone but  Carter it's doomed to end in tragedy and heartbreak."

"Ah. And you _don't_ want that to happen with your pretty boy?" John nods to himself. "It'll be hard, you know? Never met a curse before that wasn't an absolute pain in the backside to break and there's more to life than romance, love."

"I know," Kendra says. "This isn't about freedom to choose who I love. This is just about _freedom_."

John grins at her, "I knew I liked you for a reason."

\---

There must have been other women for Carter. It can't have just been her falling in love with the wrong men throughout the centuries, waiting for Carter to come and sweep her off her feet. There must have been times when it was Carter straining against the bond, Carter itching to see if there was more between them than just destiny.

She thinks about this as she chats to Ray one evening. She and John are in Peru, investigating a similar curse that has so far turned up nothing. Ray is in the lab at Palmer Tech in Star City, that 'I-haven't-slept-properly-in-three-days-because-I'm-on-the-verge-of-a-breakthrough' look clear on his face.

He's with Felicity who occasionally stumbles into Kendra's field of view, hair coming loose from it's ponytail, cheeks flushed, talking a mile a minute to someone on her phone, and a man called Curtis who Ray introduces as _terrific, Kendra, really. He's **terrific.**_

In the background John is talking very loudly to someone called Chas. Kendra has never met Chas but halfway through their first week together John started talking about him like Kendra did. She thinks this will probably make it a little awkward when they actually do meet.

Ray's trying to explain the device Curtis came up with in lots of long and complicated words that usually, Kendra would at least get the gist of but it's been a really long day. "Ray," she says, "Honey."

He stammers to a halt halfway through his sentence and stares at her, then the device in his hands, then back to her. "Oh, sorry," he grins sheepishly. "Uh, so basically, when Felicity's spine was snapped it stopped all the nerve impulses travelling down from the brain because that connection was severed but this _by passes_ that blockade, so she can walk again!"

Kendra was never really informed that Felicity was ever without the ability to walk. Regardless, she's happy about it.

"That's incredible," she says. "Think of all the lives it could change."

" _Terrific_ ," Ray corrects. "And I _know._ Right now we're trying to figure out a way to produce these affordably so that anyone can access them. It's - uh - a lot trickier than we first thought."

"Well, you're the CEO, you'll figure it out," Kendra says.

"Actually, _I'm_ the CEO," Felicity says, leaning into the screen. "Your boyfriend is technically still dead."

Ray shrugs like that's normal and Kendra shakes her head, "You said you'd get that taken care of," she reminds him.

"I'm working on it," Ray says. "But anyway, how's your thing going?"

Kendra sighs, "Not good. Surprisingly, there's not a whole lot of solid leads on Ancient curses. John's doing his best but..."

Ray makes a face, "What about Aldis' research? Anything in that?"

Kendra shakes her head. She'd poured through her son's research in detail on the Waverrider, trying to find something, _anything_ that could help them with Savage. It was mostly focused on tracing their past lives, from the beginning to Aldis' death, neat little lists of names and dates and historical counts. Photographs, wood cuts, handwritten letters, family trees.

(Folded neatly into a heavy tome detailing Ramesses II's reign, a list of names that Kendra has since realised were a list of potential children. Children she doesn't remember having, raising.

She remembers them in flashes sometimes, chubby cheeks, gummy smiles, dark hair or blond, Carter's jaw, her eyes.)

"I mean," Ray is saying. "You can't be the _first_ er, _you_ , to think about trying to break the curse."

And that's a point.

"Because _trust me,_ if they were anything like you than they weren't about to take this destiny crap sitting down," he smiles at her and  this is one of those rare moments where he is all she is thinking about, where she can imagine a future with Ray Palmer at her side, on her arm and in her bed.

But then there is the fear that when the curse is gone she will have no excuses for the doubts that may still linger in her head. No excuse for why she hesitates in saying _I love you too,_ or shies away from the idea of meeting Ray's family, meeting Ray's friends.

On the Waverider it was easier. There was less real life and more danger, there was less time to think.

She tells this all to Sara when she hangs up, the connection is patchy and John had returned to their room with a bottle of tequila that they'd inadvisably shared. John is snoring, sprawled out on the bed. Kendra will be taking the sofa tonight.

"Look," Sara says. "If you're not sure about Ray, tell him. He's a big boy, he can take it. And anyway, since when has this been about Ray? Or, for that matter, Carter? This is about you, Kendra. You and your wants and needs and desires and if you break that curse and come out wanting to marry Ray, great! If you want to go find Carter that's great too! If you want to do neither well, you can always come visit me and we can celebrate being unattached."

"Thanks, Sara," Kendra says and she's maybe a little weepy-eyed at this point. She's about to say something awful and sappy but a female voice in the background on Sara's end saves the last scraps of her dignity. Sara shushes whoever it is and giggles quietly.

"I thought you said you were _unattached,_ " Kendra says, playfully.

Sara laughs, "Old girlfriend. It's a _long_ and complicated story."

"I bet it is."

\---

 _It's not about him, or you, it's about me,_ she tells Imaginary Carter. _It's about me finally getting a say in the matter._

Imaginary Carter deflates slightly, the set of his jaw loosens, the tension in his shoulders softens. He smiles at her finally; he hasn't done that in a while and crosses the room towards her. When his fingers brush her shoulder her skin tingles, feels hot and cold all at once.

 _I know,_ he tells her gently. _I understand. I always did. I always would._

She knew that once.

\---

She dreams of him in Egypt, forbidden love and fervent meetings, of him as a soldier, a pressed blue uniform, staining her white nursing uniform with blood, of him as an archaeologist, bent over beside him unearthing a tomb.

She dreams of the little things, falling asleep beside him, the soft hairs at the back of his neck, the low rich rumble of his laugh.

But it feels different, she doesn't _yearn_ for it, doesn't feel a strange, otherworldly pull towards him, it's more _nostalgia,_ spreading through her body, warm and achy, but a _good_ achy.  The ache of a life well lived and a day well spent.

She wakes to a string of text messages from Ray. They start out about the device, random observations and speculations, interspersed with promises that once they crack this, he and Felicity will look into her curse - (if she wants him to, of course) - and devolve into strings of misspelt words and explanation marks. She reads twenty-three until  there is a message from Curtis telling her he took Ray's phone in an attempt to get him to _sleep._

She laughs at that, feeling lighter than she has in days, weeks, _years._

She sends a quick thank you message to Curtis, includes a message to Ray about  the importance of sleeping and eating and other person things because _honestly Ray, you're a person that needs to do those kind of things to live._ And she'll be very upset if she comes back home to find he's died of being too absorbed in his work eat.

She puts her phone away just in time for John to kick open the door. He's wearing sunglasses and carrying a bag full of something that smells rich and greasy. "Honestly," he grumbles. "I'm thinking about having a word with the big guy about the brightness of that thing out there."

"You mean the sun?" Kendra asks, accepting her breakfast gratefully.

"AKA the pain in my arse," John says. "Or head, at least." He dips into his own bag and pulls out a tamale. "So," he says, through a mouthful. "I think we've been dancing around this for some time but your curse originated in Egypt, right? Should probably have started there."

Kendra nods, "Might have been a good idea, yes."

"Excellent," John says. "So two plane tickets to Egypt, yeah? Your boyfriend can front us the cash, right? And extra. Because I'm going to need some _serious_ sun cream. English skin in that sun? Not a pretty picture."

"And I'd _hate_ to ruin your prettiness, John," Kendra says.

John grins and, swallowing the last of his breakfast, he rubs his hands together. "Right. Better start brushing up on my hieroglyphics then."

Kendra leaves him too it, takes her breakfast out onto the balcony of their hotel room and sends Ray another text. She won't ask him for the money, she has enough saved up.

_Biting the bullet. Heading to Egypt with John hopefully. You better still be asleep! x_

She books the tickets (economy class, one layover but at least she's not overdrawn) and sits back, closing her eyes against the warmth of the sun. Against her thigh, her phone buzzes.

_it's felicity btw. he's still asleep (!!!) i'll make him call you when he wakes up...... after i change all the names of his contacts >:) i'll make yours easy to guess. _

\---

She'll get a call later, as she and John bicker at the airport from Ray who tells her Felicity changed her contact info to 'Hot Chick' and has apparently spent a great deal of time dreaming up imaginative names for the rest of his friends. She sits on the cold floor, back against the chair while he reads out a list of monikers and she tries to match them with the names he's still stumped on.

"Ray, why don't you just phone them?" she asks, eventually.

"Well, it's kind of awkward. Not everyone knows I'm, you know, _alive_."

" _Ray,_ " she says, meaningfully.

"I know, I know, I'll sort it out. I promise. I just gotta figure out a really dramatic way to reveal myself, you know? Like zooming in to save the day or something... Anyway, I promised Cisco I'd head over to Central later and help him out with something so I should go. Call me when you land, okay? I love you."

Kendra smiles, "I love you too."


End file.
